I Became Stalin?! - Chapter 202:

Chapter 202

<Java-style Execution>

A single photo with a brief name, delivered through AP news, shook the whole of America.

Java Island, which could be considered the center of Indonesia, was the place where the British-Dutch Allied Forces and the Indonesian Independence Army clashed most fiercely.

A photojournalist from AP news sent a photo he took to his home country.

The incident that took place in Surabaya, which was controlled by the Allied Forces, quickly spread from mouth to mouth, and hit the newspaper headlines and the broadcast front.

[The brutal, trial-less summary execution of the guerrillas by the Dutch police is currently a hot topic. The Dutch government expressed its regret for this unfortunate incident that occurred due to the local circumstances, but…]

<The Nazis Return? The Victims Become the Perpetrators>

<Who Continues the War Crimes?>

The Americans remembered the atrocities they had seen and heard in the war that had ended not long ago.

The Nazi German army massacred countless civilians across Europe.

The ‘extermination camps’ and slaughterhouses that were revealed in the post-war process were enough to horrify the majority of Americans who were far away from the horrors of war.

From tabloid papers to major newspapers like the Washington Times, they had reported extensively on the massacres by the Nazis and Japan and other Axis countries. Until not long ago.

And the ‘massacre’ committed by the British-Dutch Allied Forces was enough to remind them of that unpleasant memory.

The face of the police captain, who executed the prisoners who were tied up and covered in blood, was distorted like a demon, reminiscent of the Japanese who were like devils.

The various yellow media, who were wandering around for more stimulating articles after the war ended, inflated and distorted this incident as usual.

“Did you hear? Over there in the Indian Ocean, the British and Dutch are running camps and killing hundreds of people every day…”

“I heard too! What, when they criticized the Nazis as enemies of freedom, and now they’re doing the same thing…”

The US government also decided that it would not help the US national interest to condone the Allied Forces’ misbehavior, even if it would help the homeland by ignoring the massacre.

“The US government cannot tolerate the UK and the Netherlands, who claimed to be friends of freedom, ignoring the will of independence based on the national self-determination of the Indonesians…”

The statement issued by the State Department was enough to make the governments of both countries shiver.

The US had cooperated with the Soviet Union to destroy Japan’s territory thoroughly, and there was no law that said such a thing would not happen again.

The Soviet Union, which was the first to develop nuclear weapons, ignored all other powers and shared the secret of nuclear weapons only with the US, and the powers that were struggling with post-war reconstruction and recovery costs had no resources to pour out huge amounts of money to produce something like nuclear weapons.

The will of the US and the Soviet Union, who had nuclear weapons, had to be respected. At least the countries that had lost their qualifications to be called ‘powers’ without nuclear weapons had to do so.

In fact, whether there was strong pressure from the top or not, the US FBI, which had been vigilant and arrested the ‘red commies’, even left alone the words like national self-determination and anti-imperialism.

***

“Damn! These bastards who don’t know the local situation…”

The British-Dutch Allied Forces headquarters was full of sighs and cigarette smoke.

The home governments were blocking the spread of the shocking photos with strong media control, but the US anger was not easy to appease.

Especially if the US, which provided some aid for reconstruction, cut off the aid, the economic situation would worsen and the popularity of the regime would plummet.

The government had no choice but to blame and hold the military responsible.

This was a natural judgment for the government and the people, but the morale of the soldiers in the field was falling to the bottom.

“More and more soldiers are questioning why we came here.”

“Just this week, there were several cases of shooting and suicide attempts in the barracks…”

“…What do they want us to do! Did we really do anything wrong?”

The guerrillas mostly did not wear uniforms and hid their weapons.

The Geneva Convention of 1929 also stipulated that in such cases, they would not be recognized as belligerents and could not expect to be treated as prisoners of war.

The police captain had to see his family being blown to pieces by a bomb terror with his own eyes, and he could not hide his anger in front of the perpetrators and their accomplices.

He had worked as a police bureaucrat for his whole life, honest and clean, and he was an example to his subordinates, and he was different from the colonial administrators who were corrupt and greedy.

But the photo did not care about such ‘facts’. The truth that the photo showed was only one.

The Allied Forces were executing the prisoners who were tied up and hung up one by one with a pistol.

There was no judicial procedure or trial system that the civilized people had worked hard and tried to create. Only arbitrary violence.

In front of the naked scene, people lost their words.

Those who wanted to say a lot were glared at and shut their mouths. Whatever they said, it would only sound like an excuse. In anyone’s eyes, the photo contained a cruel reality.

“Honestly, it’s unfair…”

“…”

“What did we do? Isn’t that a trivial deviation? Whether we shoot the criminals who would have been executed anyway with a bullet or hang them by the neck, what’s the difference! Damn it, is killing a person different with a gun and a rope?”

There was no difference. If they had thought about why this war had started in the first place, they might have changed their opinions, but for most imperialists, the colony was too natural to be theirs.

“Those fucking natives, those ungrateful bastards. Who taught them the law, the administration, and everything, and now they come to us with that and tell us to get out? Can a proper civilization be maintained in this region without us? They will go back to the primitive society!”

“We are only doing our duty as whites, and those lower beings who don’t know our grace… Maybe the natives who learned a little bit are trying to ruin this country by themselves.”

Of course, whatever their feelings were, they were soldiers. Obeying the orders of the superiors.

And the superiors had now ordered them to stay put. It was only giving time to those rebel bastards who were retreating as their defensive positions were falling one by one, but orders were orders.

“How long do we have to stay here? Wasting time like this? The soldiers are getting more and more tired.”

“That… I don’t know either.”

The commander leaned his body on the chair, rubbing his neck repeatedly. Nothing was going well.

Just then, a messenger rushed into the headquarters.

“Urgent news! Urgent news!”

“What? What’s going on?”

The messenger gasped for breath as he handed a telegram to the commander. A red seal indicating an urgent order was stamped on the cover.

Something big must have happened. The commander tore the seal with a tense expression and read the contents.

“Ah… Gentlemen, which do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news?”

“Sir???”

“Pick one of the two.”

He dropped the letter under the desk and buried himself in the chair, mumbling in a hoarse voice.

“Tell me the good news first, please.”

“Well, congratulations. We can go home soon.”

A brief joy crossed the faces of the officers. Who would want to fight in this faraway land, in this hot weather, being bitten and swollen by mosquitoes? The officers were no exception.

But there had to be a reason why the Dutch government issued such an order. What on earth had happened that they suddenly decided to abandon this precious colony and return home!

“What news is that… Is there anything more important than the colony? We need to rebuild the homeland now…”

“The homeland is the problem.”

“Sir?”

The commander read the letter aloud in a hoarse voice. The officers all turned pale and speechless.

[300,000 Soviet troops stationed in the former German Rhineland Republic have advanced to the border. No additional reinforcements are possible and the cabinet has decided to withdraw the troops.]

***

“Artillerymen~ Comrade Stalin has given us an order! Artillerymen! The people are calling us~”

“From thousands of cannons, fire for the tears of the people! Fire!”

From Essen to Dortmund, Düsseldorf, and Aachen, dozens and hundreds of Soviet soldiers began to appear in the cities of the German Rhineland Republic near the Dutch border.

The Soviet army had divided and occupied the German territory, but they had not done much in the way of show of force.

But as soon as a few or dozens of Soviet soldiers popped out of the garrison on the outskirts of the city and paraded around the city, the residents could not help but tremble with fear.

They could not even know that they were singing various military songs in a strange way.

The returnees who had been dragged to the Eastern Front and barely survived and came back told them of the horror of the heavy tanks and the panzers that marched through the city, making the residents’ fear reach its peak.

“Now, don’t do anything to the Germans here. Just act scary if they can’t show their pass or look like foreigners. But only act scary and don’t actually do anything!”

“Yes!!”

Their target was those who went back and forth between Germany and the Netherlands. The Netherlands was a liberated country and was recognized as a member of the Allied Forces, so it was free from Soviet control.

But as it had been during the war, the Dutch mainland was still not completely out of Germany’s sphere of influence, and especially near the border, there were not a few people who lived and worked between the two countries.

Now that the Soviets were showing their force in the German city, the Dutch would feel a chill in their bones.

“If the British and the Dutch are not fools, they would not completely ignore that we are behind this.”

The Soviet had blocked any possibility of being accused of meddling in internal affairs, such as giving weapons directly to the rebels. But if the Indochina Federation Army under the control of the Indochina Communist Party participated in the war, or if the German-made weapons captured by the Soviet army in Czechoslovakia came in, they would not be able to ignore it.

Beyond indirectly supporting the anti-imperialist struggle of the colonists, what if they hinted at the possibility of direct military action? How would the Netherlands react?

“How did they react then?”

“Yes! Comrade Secretary. The frequency of military operations has decreased and they are preparing for a gradual withdrawal. They also requested negotiations with the Indonesian Independence Army Command…”

“Good, good. Very good…”

It was hard to touch the British. They were ‘comrades’ who fought against Germany, and if they had to rank their contribution within the Allied Forces, they would be third after the US and the Soviet Union.

But they could put as much intangible pressure as they wanted on the Dutch, who had low contribution and even gave them a clear reason.

The US public opinion was now turning negative towards the imperialist invaders, and the State Department had even issued a criticism…

“Hehehe. Let’s see how they come out.”